Orica-GreenEdge had to wait to the very last second of Tuesday's opening team time trial at the Tour de Romandie to see their stage win slip away to Team Sky.
The British outfit started last on the day, and with Orica-GreenEdge having set the fastest time with eight teams remaining, only Sky was left on course as the Australian team occupied the hot seat, watching team after team fail to eclipse their mark. The wait came down to the final second as Sky stopped the clock just 0.6 of a second faster to take top honours and put Geraint Thomas in the leader's jersey.
"In the instant it's really extremely disappointing to lose by so little," said Orica-GreenEdge sport director Neil Stephens. "But then when you sit back and analyse it, you think, 'well we did everything correctly.' The start was good, the middle was good and the climb was good. No one under-performed. What we wanted to do we achieved, it's just that Sky achieved it marginally better."
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Stephens said the team has won and lost other important time trials by less than a second.
"This one was one of the losses, but we are looking forward to getting a couple of team time trial wins in the belt throughout the year, one of them hopefully next month and another towards the end of the year."
Team Sky matched Orica-GreenEdge's intermediate split time, but then covered the second-half of the course, which included the climb of the Mont d'Orzeires, less than one tick of the clock faster. Both teams will go into stage 2, a punchy 168.1km race from Apples to Saint-Imier, tied on time at 21:19.
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